Perhaps more importantly, UFC 182′s buyrate represents the most successful showing in Jon Jones‘s career. Previously, the light-heavyweight champion’s best number was the 700k buys hauled in by UFC 145, where Jones faced off against training-partner-turned-rival Rashad Evans. So yeah, it helps when the fighters hate each other.

MMA reached its zenith at UFC 182 on Saturday, but if you looked at and listened to the crowd throughout the night you’d have hardly recognized that.

The audience was sparse and half-dead. They’d have done a wave to entertain themselves if the first four fights of the PPV — four decisions featuring unimpressive and sluggish performances — hadn’t already put them to sleep. An incessant stream of “this event sucks” tweets rolled in. This script has played itself out in the past. A card that’s supposed to be the pinnacle of the sport turns out to be a boring, uninteresting, overhyped amalgam of everything wrong with it, only this time we spent an extra $5. It appeared the poor showings, as well as the restless (and partially absent) audience would ruin one of the most anticipated UFC cards in recent memory.

The UFC 178 estimate is the most surprising to me, because the event was so highly anticipated among hardcore MMA fans as a “stacked” card with Event of the Year potential, and it still barely broke 200k. Of course, casual fans only look at the main event, and Demetrious Johnson is basically the worst PPV draw on the roster.

It’s almost as surprising that UFC 180 performed as well as it did, considering that the card had no stars outside of the main event. And 380,000 buys for UFC 181 is very good, relatively speaking. That’s like the equivalent of 650,000 buys in 2009.

Cain Velasquez became another victim (again) of the UFC’s so-called “injury bug,” pulling out of UFC 180 with a knee injury. This is great news for people who want to see a weirdo holding a UFC heavyweight title as Mark Hunt stepped in to fight original challenger Fabricio Werdum. This is bad news for fans who want to watch the greatest heavyweight talent in the sport since Fedor Emelianenko. It’s horrible news for the UFC, who set up this event in Mexico City to both help cultivate the Mexican market and provide a similar atmosphere for Velasquez that Conor McGregor received in Ireland earlier this year.

It’s another blow to the UFC’s pay-per-view business. UFC Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta told Sports Business Daily that “about 80 percent” of fights they wanted to put on have been cancelled. That’s probably an exaggeration (at least if we’re looking at the entirety of the UFC’s matchmaking), but the reality isn’t much better. Of the 14 events including and between UFC 168 and UFC 181 (including the cancelled UFC 176), only five have escaped an injury to a fighter in either the main or co-main event. That is, 64% of UFC PPVs within that timeframe have had alterations or cancellations to one of the featured bouts at the top of the card.

Combined with the loss of Georges St-Pierre (quasi-retirement) and Anderson Silva (wishboned leg), the injuries at the top of marquee events have led the UFC to its worst year on pay-per-view since 2005. In 2005, the UFC ran six pay-per-view events for a total of 950,000 buys and an average of 158,000 per event. This year hasn’t been that bad (2.22M total buys/277,500 per event), but that’s far below the “down years” of 2011-13. (It should be noted that those “down years” are in line with the total PPV business the UFC did prior to the 2009-10 Lesnar Era.)

“It’s too early to get accurate numbers, but every indication we’ve gotten was very bad, and that it showed a steep decline from UFC 173, which was among the lower numbers of the last eight years. UFC PPV shows usually range from 200,000 to 500,000 Google searches after the event, and are usually in the top few searched for items in the country. A bad show may only do 100,000. Bellator’s show last month hit 100,000. A big show can top 500,000, with the shows that hover around 1 million buys usually doing anywhere from 1 million to 5 million searches. This show did less than 20,000, unheard of for a PPV…

It’s been over three years since the UFC produced a pay-per-view that earned more than one million buys, but it appears that UFC 168: Weidman vs. Silva 2 has ended the drought. According to Dave Meltzer, UFC 168 broke the seven-figure threshold, selling up to 1.1 million PPVs.

A small handful of UFC shows have crept into 900k+ territory since July 2010 — all headlined by superstars like Lesnar, St-Pierre, and Anderson Silva — but no others managed to score an even million until UFC 168, which could go down as the second-most-successful UFC PPV of all time. I guess MMA fans didn’t mind paying that extra five bucks after all.

1.) Showtime stays in the MMA biz, will announce deal with Invicta FC and others.

MMA is just too popular to completely wash your hands of. Showtime may finally be done with Strikeforce, but that only means they’re now free to partner up with the likes of all-female Invicta FC or the World Series of Fighting, both of which could be looking for more permanent homes after their early success in 2012. Don’t let the Invicta PPV news fool you; they can’t win that battle. No matter who inks the deal, expect Showtime to counter-program at least one UFC event.

2.) A Ronda Rousey loss brings about the swift execution of women’s MMA in the UFC.

A couple caveats:
Keep in mind that there was a technical issue on Saturday night where DirecTV subscribers were unable to order the UFC 150 broadcast by phone or computer, although they could still order it via their remotes, according to reports. Plus, Bendo vs. Frankie ran up against the penultimate night of the 2012 Olympics, which may have stolen a few more viewers.

After pulling back their pay-per-view start times to 9 p.m. ET this year to cater to East Coast viewers, the UFC will be returning to their original 10 p.m. ET / 7 p.m. PT time-slot, beginning with UFC 141 on December 30th. The promotion confirmed the switch to USA Today yesterday, stating that their decision was based on “careful consideration and feedback from our fans.”

It appears that the 9 p.m. experiment didn’t have the intended effect. According to estimates from MMAPayout and the Wrestling Observer, UFC pay-per-views have been averaging 414,500 buys from January to August 2011, down 25% compared to the first eight months of 2010. In particular, it was reported that UFC 134 woefully underperformed, although that event’s totals were certainly affected by Hurricane Irene.